Adobe's pledge: We won't train AI with your data
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Illustration: Maura Losch/Axios
Adobe says its stance on using customers' data to train its AI models is simple and absolute: It doesn't.
Why it matters: Adobe's software is widely used by many of the creative professionals who feel their livelihoods are under threat by generative AI.
In this series on What AI Knows About You, Axios is looking, company by company, at how the data-hungry AI industry uses its own customers' information to create and refine its products.
- These data practices will shape both the nature of AI itself and the extent to which the public ends up trusting or rejecting the new technology.
- If AI firms make aggressive use of customer data, creators of intellectual property fear their work will lose economic value — and individual users may find that AI chatbots and other products know, and even share, sensitive personal information.
Catch up quick: Adobe has released a number of generative models under its Firefly brand, including ones to produce photos, vector images, text and video.
- It has integrated generative AI features into a range of products including Photoshop, Illustrator, Express and Premiere Pro.
- Unlike other AI providers whose generative models are trained using a range of "publicly available" data scraped from the web, Adobe has said it will only use content to which it has rights, making its models "commercially safe" for businesses to use.
Between the lines: Despite Adobe's standing commitment not to use customer data for AI training, a change in its terms of service earlier this year left some observers concerned that it was shifting away from that stance.
- In response, Adobe clarified those terms and codified its pledge to keep customer info out of AI training datasets.
- As part of an effort to help indicate which content uses AI, Adobe is also allowing creators to digitally sign their work and indicate whether or not they want it to be used to train AI systems.
Yes, but: Adobe does train its systems on content users contribute to be resold on Adobe Stock, the company's marketplace for stock images.
- Adobe is paying an annual "contributor bonus" to those whose photos, vectors, illustrations or videos are used to train the company's Firefly models.
What they're saying: Adobe chief strategy officer Scott Belsky told Axios the uproar over the terms of service change highlighted to him that "no company that is the steward of data in this modern age has the benefit of the doubt."
- "You have to be explicit not just about what you are going to do, but what you aren't going to do," he said.
The big picture: Even with its assurances, Adobe's embrace of generative AI has been controversial with some customers — many of whom see the technology as a threat to their livelihood as artists, designers and content producers.
- And while the company touts its own models as commercially safe and trained only on content to which it has legal rights, the company is letting customers use other models within Photoshop and other tools — and those alternatives often have murkier data policies and practices.
Go deeper: What AI knows about you
